No matter how you look at it, the way we work is changing. Employees are demanding more flexibility in their day-to-day lives, and employers concerned with retaining top talent are listening. One novel idea being workshopped is a four-day workweek. However, we need to have an honest evaluation of how productivity and the well-being of employees trade off to understand if this truncated workweek will be a viable solution. The simple fact is that reducing working hours does not necessarily reduce the workload employees are expected to manage. Reducing hours does not reduce the stress some feel. A pilot program in New Zealand found that employees took shorter breaks and spent far less time socializing with one another to address their “real work” responsibilities, and while some were invigorated by the new pace, others felt much higher levels of stress. With these individuals, the extra day off was spent recovering from the more intense schedule.